


Honesty

by gotsnolegs



Series: Honesty [2]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:09:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6803506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotsnolegs/pseuds/gotsnolegs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With tensions high at the Capsule Corporation after the Cell Games, Bulma realizes she has to be honest with herself and with Vegeta about the downward turns their relationship has taken, and Vegeta discovers he hasn't been completely honest with himself, either.</p><p>A sort-of sequel to "Something Growing".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honesty

**Author's Note:**

> I started this with the intention of writing vegebul smut, and instead it turned into angst. How'd that happen?
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ or any of the characters associated with the manga, anime, or movies.

HONESTY

Things were… weird. She needed time to puzzle this out. She needed a moment to stop her head from spinning, but the gentle sound of his snores buzzed in her brain, distracting her. No – if she were being totally honest with herself (and she needed to be, to figure this one out), it was his presence that was distracting. His snores were barely there.

Vegeta had not been himself. Not that she knew him particularly well, well-guarded treasure that he was, but she liked to believe that over the past little while she had gotten to peek at his true self through the cracks in his walls. Of course, she could just be fooling herself. She was hesitant to trust her instincts regarding him and his feelings ever since he had ditched the scene entirely the very day she told him she was pregnant.

When he had first left, she had been confident he would return; not groveling and probably not even with an apology on his lips, but with a quiet resolve to do the right thing. As months crawled on without so much as a word from Vegeta, her confidence in his return was replaced by a confidence that he would _not_. Ever, in fact. Not even his thirst to test the androids’ power, not even his rivalry with Goku could tempt him back to this planet. He had been tempted enough.

He had come back, to her immense surprise, but to say his feelings towards her had cooled would be an understatement. He hardly looked at her, refused to acknowledge Trunks, and sneered at Trunks’ adult counterpart in disdain once his identity was revealed. But by then, she had come to accept that his feelings towards her had been virtually nonexistent from the beginning anyway. She may have felt used if not for the knowledge that her pursuit of him had begun as purely sexual as well.

Riding out the wait until the Cell Games, Vegeta had warily returned to the Capsule Corporation. Housing nearly all of the other Z Fighters, Bulma had welcomed him coolly and he took up residence in his old room. Things fell into the routine they had followed when he had first stayed with her: they barely saw each other except in passing, and spoke only out of sheer necessity.

But then the Cell Games ended in their… victory? She wasn’t sure what to call it. Was it truly a win when they suffered such heavy losses? In any case, the Cell Games ended, and her friends headed off to resume the lives they’d put on hold for the past three years, and to rebuild the lives that had been shattered in a handful of moments. Trunks left, back to his own time. Bulma didn’t miss the farewell that passed between him and Vegeta. It had been casual in expression only; the weight behind it was significant. Before she knew it, she was alone with him again.

“When are you leaving?” she asked as he passed her on his way into the house. She adjusted baby Trunks’ hat, pulling one side down lower to centre it back on his head.

Vegeta paused, just behind her. “What?”

“When are you leaving?” she repeated, turning to face him. She was certain he had heard her the first time.

He was watching her carefully. She knew he was trying to calculate her by the way his eyes searched her face for subtle giveaways of her meaning. He was assessing her the way he would an opponent. And weren’t they opponents now?

“As soon as I’m ready,” he said.

“When will that be?”

He gave a small, cruel smirk. “Eager to be rid of me?” Before she could reply, he had turned away from her and continued on his way.

Bulma scowled at his back, before shifting her focus back to Trunks, who was staring at her with his serious expression. “Your father is an asshole,” she said to him.

If she were being honest with herself now, she had not been eager for Vegeta to leave. That hadn’t been the basis of her question. She assumed he would leave, since everyone else had gone to their own homes, and he was obviously disinterested in sticking around. She’d just wanted a timeframe.

But Vegeta had not been himself, and he spent the next few weeks moping around the house. Despite the distance between them and her preoccupation with Trunks, it didn’t take long for Bulma to notice. She had never seen Vegeta mope. She’d seen him frustrated, angry, violent, but never mope. He hadn’t so much as set foot inside the gravity room since the tournament. He had made no effort to leave the Capsule Corporation.

It pissed Bulma off.

She found him just a few mornings prior slumped on the couch, the remote tossed carelessly beside him, his head tilted onto his hand. She paused for a moment, watching him, her anger mounting, before snatching the remote off the cushion and turning the TV off. His gaze moved towards her, bored.

“You can’t stay here,” she said.

He said nothing, but he lifted his head off his palm and let his hand fall across the arm of the couch.

“It was one thing when you were contributing, you know, working towards Earth’s salvation. But you’re doing nothing now. You can’t stay here.”

She watched as his fingers curled into his palm on the armrest.

“If you need a few more days to get some things together or figure out where you’re going, fine, but _this_ ”—she gestured vaguely to the world around her—“isn’t happening.” When he continued to say nothing, she leaned in closer and waved her hand in front of his face. “Is there anyone home?”

He reached out with his lightning speed and gripped her wrist, the couch still indented from where his elbow had been leaning. Bulma’s eyes widened in surprise and she tried to pull back, but he held too firmly. Back to their old ways, she thought, where she yells at him and he yells at her and neither of them really wins. So she planted herself and waited for whatever vicious comeback he had for her.

Instead, he loosened his grip and let his fingers trail over her hand for just a moment before letting her go entirely. Bulma stared at him, uncomprehending, as he pushed himself off the couch and wandered away. She stood in the middle of the living room for several minutes more, until Trunks’ cries brought her to his crib.

The next day, it occurred to Bulma around midday that Trunks should have woken up from his morning nap quite some time ago, but she had yet to hear him cry. She chewed at her nail as she made her way towards his room, wondering if his cough from yesterday had become a full-blown cold and Trunks was sleeping it off. She hoped her little baby wasn’t getting sick.

She halted in the doorway of his room when she saw Vegeta sitting cross-legged on the floor across from Trunks, watching him wave his rattle at him. At her gasp, Vegeta turned to look at her.

“I, uh, I… didn’t expect you to be in here,” she said, sliding a hand over her hair in an attempt to hide her surprise.

“Why isn’t he walking yet?”

They had spoken so little since the Cell Games that the sound of his voice surprised her. No, if she was being completely honest, the sound of his voice – that low rumble that growled her name, that teased and mocked her, that made her feel everything except the fear he expected – sent shivers down her spine.

“He’s just a baby,” she said.

“He’s nine months.”

“I’m surprised you know,” she replied dryly.

Vegeta’s brow furrowed and he turned away from her. “He should be walking.”

“It’ll happen soon,” Bulma said. “He can stand up, and he can take a few steps while he’s holding onto something. It’s around the right time by human development standards.”

Vegeta made an irritated sound between his teeth. “You coddle him too much,” he said accusingly.

“Is that so?” Bulma said bitterly, and just like that the longing she’d felt when he spoke to her went up in smoke.

“If you didn’t carry him around so much, he’d be forced to start walking.”

“Thank you, Dr. Baby Expert.” She stepped between them then, scooping Trunks up off the carpet.

“You’re doing that just to make me mad,” Vegeta said, nodding towards the baby in her arms, his jaw tight in irritation despite the fact that he knew she was goading him.

Bulma stared down at him, her expression hard. “You get no fucking opinion on the matter. You _left_.”

He looked back at her for a few tense moments, still sitting cross-legged on the floor, before a rattle careened past his head and shattered against the wall behind him. Both Bulma and Vegeta looked at Trunks, who exploded in high-pitched giggles. The friction dissipated, Bulma chuckled into Trunks’ hair, and wandered slowly out of the room.

The following day, Bulma decided to ask Vegeta a question: “Why aren’t you training?”

Vegeta looked up at her from the bowl of cereal he was nursing – he wasn’t eating food at the same speed he always did – and regarded her carefully. He seemed to consider saying something, probably something snide if the way his lip pulled up at one side was any indication, but he opted instead to spoon more food into his mouth.

“Are you _this_ unmotivated now that the androids have come and gone?” she pressed.

He dropped the spoon into the bowl and leaned back in his chair. His eyes were hooded, but Bulma sensed he was on the verge of explaining himself.

On a couple of occasions, she had gotten him to open up. The first time had been nearly two years ago, when he finally expressed his absolute frustration over his inability to become a Super Saiyan. She was certain that he hadn’t intended to tell her any of what he shared with her that evening on the balcony, but it seemed that once he had started, he couldn’t stop the words from pouring from his lips. Their relationship had changed that night, and they had gone from mere acquaintances to teammates. Bulma became more driven to help him succeed. He became more willing to let her. And they worked together on innovations that they agreed might be most beneficial to him.

The second time he opened up, the time when Bulma began to wonder if the balcony had some magical properties that caused loose lips, Vegeta had told her about his home: how it was reddish, all the time; how it was hotter than here, and dustier; how it had three moons that each reflected the crimson sun differently; how the air was thicker, and sometimes he found it hard to breathe properly with Earth’s thin oxygen. Did he miss it? she’d asked. It was a stupid question – she knew that, and the way he shut his mouth and stopped discussing it afterwards confirmed that as well. But that was the moment, Bulma realized now, that they had gone from teammates to friends. Afterwards, he listened to her talk about her first adventure for the Dragon Balls for hours, feigning disinterest, but making no effort to leave or silence her.

The third time he opened up had been in the kitchen. She had pressed herself against his chest and he had let her. She had placed her fingers on the back of his neck and he had let her. She had touched her lips against his and he had let her. And when she led him to her bedroom, he had let her do that too. At some point that night, he stopped just _letting_ her and started returning the favours.

All of this had been before Trunks: before Vegeta had found out about her pregnancy and fled the planet, before he had ignored them almost completely, before he had dismissed and degraded his son’s future self. Before the tentative relationship they had struck up completely disintegrated in the face of his disinterest and arrogance. Bulma wasn’t sure if he would open up again now, especially since he was turning his attention back to his cereal, trying to avoid the question.

“Can you just… be honest?” she pressed, trying to sound sympathetic.

“What’s the point?” he snapped.

She frowned at him. “Because if you’re honest, maybe we can work through this. You know, help you get your shit together and—”

“What’s the point of _training_?” he clarified irritably.

Bulma paused, blinking at him. Slowly, she said, “To… become… stronger?” Hadn’t that _always_ been the point of his training?

“Stronger than what?”

Her eyebrows drew upwards and together, wrinkling her forehead as she glanced around the kitchen in confusion as though the answer may be writ on the walls. “Stronger than you are now?” She had tried to keep the condescension out of her voice, but failed. To her, the answer seemed obvious. Why continue working on anything if not to improve?

But clearly she and Vegeta were on different pages, because he stared at her like she was insane. “Why?” he asked.

“What do you mean, _why_?” she said, her voice pitching higher than she’d meant it to. Her frustration was mounting. Then, before he could respond (not that she was sure he was even going to), she closed her eyes and held her hands out in front of her. “No. You know what? Forget it. I don’t care. If you want to do nothing for the rest of your life, that isn’t my problem.” She let her arms fall back to her sides as she opened her eyes to look at him. “But, I was serious, Vegeta. You can’t stay here. Don’t make me give you an eviction date.” She pressed the chair nearest her into the table as she moved past it, the grating sound of its legs against the floor punctuating her annoyance.

“I fucked up.”

The admission caused her to whip her head back towards him forcefully. Her lips parted, and she watched him with furrowed brows as he stared into his cereal, growing ever-soggier, his own face pinched. A biting comment rose in her throat. To which _fuck up_ was he referring? Sleeping with her? Getting her pregnant? Abandoning her afterwards? Surely, in his mind, those all constituted as fucking up.

She swallowed her bitterness. He was opening up; just a crack, but maybe she could peer through. So instead she said, “How?”

The silence dragged out and she considered prompting him again, but he exhaled deeply and she knew he was still considering the conversation at hand. Finally, still avoiding her gaze, he said, “The Cell Games. I… made tactical errors.”

 _That_ was his fuck up? Rage snapped behind Bulma’s eyes. Of all the things he had handled poorly in the past couple years, a few _tactical errors_ was what he focused on.

He continued on before she could comment. “I… let Trunks die.”

Her anger melted away as soon as it had come. “Oh.”

She was pulling the chair back out from the table and lowering herself into it before she realized what she was doing. She rested her forearms on the table, not turned towards him, not touching him, but nearby.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally. “That… must be hard.” She wasn’t sure what to say. Diplomacy had never really been her strong suit, bull-headed as she was, but she was sure that telling him it was okay because Trunks had been wished back was not the response he was looking for. ( _Was_ he looking for a response? She had initiated this conversation.)

Apparently, her sympathetic strategy wasn’t the appropriate reply either, because he glared at her across the table. “I don’t need your pity.”

She rolled her eyes. “What the fuck do you want me to say, Vegeta? Yeah, okay, you fucked up. Trunks died. Lucky for us, we can wish people back. You don’t like how things turned out? _Do better_.”

“Better than what?”

“Better than…?” she repeated, throwing her arms up in exasperation. “What’s wrong with you? Better than you did last time!”

A thought suddenly struck her that she hadn’t considered before, and she became aware that her arms had frozen into goalposts before she awkwardly lowered them back to the table.

“This isn’t even about you,” she said.

“What?”

“Nothing has ever been about you.” Her eyes were wide suddenly with understanding. “Has it?”

His own eyes bored into hers as his face darkened. She could tell he didn’t like where this was going. She didn’t care.

“Your whole life, everything has always been about someone else. Sure, you act like it’s about you; who wouldn’t? But it was always about someone else. You wanted to become a Super Saiyan for your father, who always said you could. You wanted to become stronger than the last person who beat you; you wanted to become stronger than Frieza so you could finally get back at him for all the bullshit. Then you wanted to surpass Goku. The only reason you trained so hard, for so long, was to become better than him.” She pressed her hands into the table, leaning towards him. “This is about Goku. He’s gone now. You have nothing to measure yourself against, and you have nothing to motivate you.”

His lips had pulled back into a snarl. “Listen, you idiotic—”

She went on as though he hadn’t spoken, quieter now, less intense, and she focused on a knot in the wood of the table: “The only time you attempted to do something for yourself was collect the Dragon Balls, and even that was driven by other people in the background. And you were unsuccessful, so I wonder how that makes you see yourself?” She was musing now, talking aloud but mostly to herself.

Her eyes swiveled back towards him; he was still outraged. She lifted her hand from the table and reached towards him. Before she could touch him, he snatched his own arms away, folding them across his chest. But her fingers had grazed his skin. She let her hand fall in his space on the table.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize before.” Her apology was loaded with a sincerity that caused Vegeta’s arms to slip into his lap.

Silence descended between them, and Bulma felt that she had created a huge hole in his wall. It was a long time before Vegeta finally stood, dumping his uneaten food in the sink as he left.

She accosted him in the hallway late the following morning and shoved Trunks into his arms. Vegeta tried to resist at first, but she smooshed Trunks’ head into his chest until he babbled in protest, and Vegeta finally took him awkwardly under his armpits.

“Yesterday,” she said, “you told me it bothered you that Trunks died.”

Vegeta was holding the baby away from his body, clearly uncomfortable. “I didn’t say—”

Bulma cut him off with a raised hand. “I understand why that would bother you. There are other things bothering you that you can’t do anything about. But your relationship with Trunks… _That_ you can do something about.” She waved her hand at them as she walked down the hall in the opposite direction. “So bond, or something.”

A few hours later, she found Vegeta sitting on the couch with Trunks propped up beside him, surrounded by slobbery toys. Trunks looked disheveled. His hat had come off and his wispy hair was a tangled mess; drool dripped down his chin and his shirt, already spotted with wet puddles, was riding up his stomach. Vegeta looked shell-shocked.

“Put him down for a nap with me?” she asked.

Vegeta stood, and it was a moment before he realized she expected him to take the baby. Stiffly, he lifted Trunks off the couch and made his way towards the stairs with him held away from him like he was a hot potato.

“You can hold him against your chest,” Bulma said lightly.

Vegeta looked disgusted. “He’s covered in spit.”

Bulma nodded gravely. “Ah, yes. Saliva. The kryptonite of Saiyans.”

Vegeta made an irritated sound in her direction, but held Trunks closer. After all but dumping Trunks in the crib, Vegeta tried to beat a hasty retreat.

“Where are you going?”

He barely paused in the doorway as he cast her a glance over his shoulder. “To pack.”

She jerked her body away from the door and back towards her son, her eyes suddenly stinging.

He found her later, as she sat tiredly in front of the TV, her mother watching Trunks while she took some much-needed time for herself. Tiredly, she pulled her attention from the TV to his face.

“I’m taking the gravity room,” he said.

There was a beat of silence before she said, “Okay.”

“Did you want me to arrange to send it back here?”

“No, you… don’t have to do that.”

He didn’t really respond, just watched her for a couple seconds more, before continuing past her towards the back door. She followed his retreating back with her eyes before pushing herself out of her seat.

“Wait.”

He stopped but didn’t turn towards her, and as she came up behind him she rested her fingers lightly on the back of his arm.

“Don’t go yet.”

His head turned fractionally towards her. “For days you’ve been badgering me about leaving,” he pointed out, “now you’re saying to wait?”

She felt frantic, all of a sudden. Her eyes darted everywhere except his face. She let go of his arm, ran her fingers through her hair, touched his forearm this time, let go again. “Just… wait…”

He pressed against her chest, touched his lips to hers, and she let him.

And now, here they were. He, asleep beside her, his legs tangled in her sheets; she, wide awake, her fingers tracing designs on his chest of their own accord. If she were being totally honest…

She shook him gently awake. He opened an eye to look at her, still shaking off his slumber, when she placed a kiss on his forehead, then another on his cheek, and a third on his jaw. She pulled back to see that both his eyes were on her now, searching her. He was trying to anticipate her next move.

“I have to be honest with you,” she said, and she watched as his face started to close off as his guessed – incorrectly – what was coming next. “I want you to stay.”

He looked at her in surprise. “What?”

“Yes, I want you to stay. I don’t want things to be like how they have been, but I want you to stay. And if you have shit you need to work through, that’s fine. I want to help you do that. But.” And here she paused, dramatically, to emphasize her point: “I want you to do what you want to. Pursue something for yourself. Do something that is just for you. So, if you want to leave, then that’s what I want you to do.”

He considered her for several long moments, and Bulma felt anxiety building in her chest. Couldn’t he just _decide_ so she could plan how to best move forward with her life – either with or without him?

“You never do anything that’s just for you,” he said, finally.

She paused. “Huh?”

“Everything you do is for other people.”

“Uh…” She thought for a moment, deflating. “Well, no… I do things for myself.”

“You do things for other people because you want to. It’s important to you to help people.”

“Well…”

“But you don’t want me to do things for other people.”

“No.” She exhaled loudly, shaking her head. “I don’t want you to use other people as your sole basis of motivation. I don’t want you to do things because other people expect it of you. Do something because it’s important to _you_.”

“Becoming stronger than Kakarot was important to me.”

Bulma nodded slowly. “Okay…”

“But he’s dead now, because of me.”

“Not because of—”

“Yes, because I let Cell reach his perfect form.” He lifted himself up so he was sitting.

“You know,” she said hesitantly, “it’s okay to grieve.”

“I’m not grieving.”

“And it’s okay to feel guilty.” She sat up beside him, leaning lightly on his arm. “ _And_ it’s okay to need some time to deal with those things.”

“Will you shut up?” he said, but his voice held none of its usual bite.

“Okay. But I just want you to know that I’m one less thing you have to worry about.”

He turned towards her, twisting his body so both his hands could grip her shoulders, and pressed her down so she was lying on the bed beneath him. His mouth found hers and her fingers reached around to tangle in his hair. His lips trailed across her jaw and his breath tickled her ear.

Suppressing a giggle born of nervousness rather than his tickling breath, she asked, “Are you staying then?”

He lifted his head slightly to kiss her temple. “I guess I can do that for you.”

“ _No_ —” she started, exasperated, but he cut her off with a low chuckle.

“I want to, too.”


End file.
